Читать книгу Taming the Brooding Cattleman - Marion Lennox - Страница 8

HE’D failed.

Jack Connor stood at his sister’s graveside and accepted how badly he’d broken his promise to his mother.

‘Take care of your sister.’

He’d been eight years old when his mother walked away. Sophie had been six.

What followed was a bleak, hard childhood, cramming schoolwork into his grandfather’s demands for farm labour, and caring for his sister in the times between. Finally he’d escaped his grandfather’s tyranny to the luxury of wages. From there he’d built a company from nothing. He’d had no choice. He’d been desperate for funds to provide the professional care Sophie so desperately needed.

It hadn’t worked. Even though he’d made money, the care had come too late. For all that time he’d watched his sister self-destruct.

Sophie’s social worker had come to the funeral. Nice of her. Her presence meant there’d been a whole three people in attendance. She’d looked into his grim face and she’d tried to ease his pain.

‘This was not your fault, Jack. Your mother wounded your sister when she walked out, but the ultimate responsibility was Sophie’s.’

But he stared down at the grave and knew she was wrong. Sophie was dead and the ultimate responsibility was Jack’s. He hadn’t been enough.

What now?

Return to Sydney, to his IT company, to riches that had bought him nothing?

He stared down at the rain-soaked roses he’d laid on his sister’s grave, and a memory wafted back. Sophie at his grandfather’s farm, on one of the occasions his grandfather had been so blind drunk they weren’t afraid of him. Sophie in what was left of his grandmother’s rose garden. Sophie pressing roses into storybooks. ‘We’ll keep them for ever.’

Suddenly he found himself thinking of horses he hadn’t seen for years. His grandfather’s horses, his friends from childhood. They’d asked for nothing but food, shelter and exercise. When he’d been with the horses, he’d almost been happy.

The farm was his now. His grandfather had died a year ago, but the demands of Sophie’s increased illness meant he hadn’t had time to go there. He guessed it’d be rundown. Even the brief legal contact he’d made had him sensing the manager his grandfather had employed was less than honest, but the bloodlines of his grandfather’s stockhorses should still be intact. Remnants of the farm’s awesome reputation remained.

Could he bring it back to its former glory?

Decision time.

He stared down at the rain-washed grave, his thoughts bleak as death.

If he was his grandfather, he thought, he’d hit something. Someone.

He wasn’t his grandfather.

But he didn’t want to return to Sydney, to a staff who treated him as he treated them, with remote courtesy.

The company would keep going without him.

He stood and he stared at his sister’s grave for a long, long time.

What?

He could go back to the farm, he thought. He still knew about horses.

Did he know enough?

Did it matter? Maybe not.

Decision made.

Maybe he’d make a go of it. Maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d do it alone and he wouldn’t care.

Sophie was dead and he never had to care again.